elected as
poor-law guardians. A Scotch Married Women's Property bill was
passed, which was a great improvement on the former law. A
Matrimonial Causes Amendment act was also carried, which enables
magistrates to grant a judicial separation to wives who are
brutally treated, along with a maintenance for their children. Some
of our friends regretted that these side issues should absorb the
time of those who might otherwise have been working exclusively for
suffrage; but this was a short-sighted fear. By broadening the
basis of work, by asking simultaneously for better laws, better
education, better employments and wider fields of usefulness, the
sympathies of more women were engaged; while underlying and
supporting all was the steady agitation for the suffrage with its
compact organization of committees, meetings, publications and
petitions which kept parliament awake to the fact that though still
disfranchised, women had claims which it could not afford to
ignore.

[Illustration: Priscilla Bright McLaren]

This was a time when the agitation for the suffrage had apparently
reached a stationary condition, neither advancing nor receding, in
which it was destined to remain for some years longer. Other
causes, as the abolition of West Indian slavery and the corn laws,
have had a similar period of apparent torpor succeeding the first
activity. Justin McCarthy in his "History of our own Times," says:

This is, from whatever cause, a very common phenomenon in our
political history. A movement which began with the promise of
sweeping all before it, seems to lose all its force, and is
supposed by many observers to be now only the care of a few
earnest and fanatical men. Suddenly it is taken up by a minister
of commanding influence, and the bore or the crotchet of one
parliament is the great party controversy of a second, and the
accomplished triumph of a third.

During the year of 1879, it was thought desirable to ascertain by
some practical test what were the various reasons which caused
thinking women to wish for the suffrage; and letters were addressed
to ladies who were eminent either in literature or art, or who were
following scientific or professional careers, or were engaged in
any form of philanthropic work. The answers that were returned were
collected into a pamphlet of exceeding interest, which was sent to
each member before the debate, and it was amazing to watch from